To create a garden…

”I think you’ve lost your mind!

I think you’ve completely lost your mind!”, he said.

My husband.

Striding upset from window to window, looking out over the garden.

”I think you’ve lost your mind. Here we buy a grown-up garden, and then you cut down and dig up everything”

I tried to tell him about the garden I had in my head. About roses and lilies and iris and thyme and sage and syringe and guelder rose and rhododendron and grapes and apricot trees and clematis and butterfly bush and geranium and tulips and daffodils and catmint and oregano and wild strawberries and hosta and lavender and Sweet William and honeysuckle and peonies and giant bellflower and azaleas and windflowers and!

That I didn’t settle with elm shrubs, white cedar, lawns and paving.

That I had to destroy in order to create.

A few years have past.

Now my Garden exists in reality.

It’s been a long time since he last said I’d lost my mind.

Now he says:

”Darling, I was thinking of taking a walk in the Garden. Would you like to join me?”

We can scientifically establish the wavelength of the light that passes through a red petal.
But the intense visual experience can’t be captured with figures.

We can scientifically analyse the chemical structure of the scent molecules of the rose.
But the experience of the scent can’t be described with a chemical formula.

The blackbird’s song in springtime can be described in terms of decibel and the oscillation of the sound waves.
But the bitter sweet longing it arouses!

We can carry out a detailed analysis of the calorie content and the nutritive value of the summer’s first new potatoes.

But the taste!

Everything earthly is heavenly.

All living beings are built from the elements that were once created in an exploding supernova.

Matter seems to strive to build increasingly complex structures.

To come to life.